Evil Without a Face sj-1

by Jordan Dane

She knew from experience that a blinding white light would sear the dark. And a glowing ball of fire would radiate like a shock wave in all directions, followed by a billowing stench. Even now, the blast resonated into the corridor where she stood ready to move in.

  The fierce image would leave its imprint on the eyes of anyone inside the room. The white light would hang suspended in darkness then splinter into spangles, blurring the vision of anyone looking directly at it. In a daze, those affected would have minimal hearing, registering only muffled sounds.

  Her team had only seconds to gain advantage.

  She had entered the room in a rush through the smoke, leaving tail-end Charlie to provide cover outside the door. As soon as her team broke through the threshold of the door, they split apart to avoid becoming easy targets. Each carved out their piece of the pie—their responsibility—breaking down the room into sectors, with trust in the team a necessity of the job.

  She heard screams of men through the haze and caught movement in the far corner of the room, a ghostly image in night vision green. But she had her assignment.

  “Clear right!” she yelled. Her section of the room was clear of targets, but she moved to her next position, tightening the circle.

  Other members of her team weren’t so lucky. A short spurt of bullets erupted, and even through her com set she heard the muffled yet chilling sound of bullets pounding flesh. A body dropped to the floor and the shrill scream of a girl reminded her why they’d come. The hostage shrank into the corner, too afraid to move.

  “Clear left,” her man called out instinctively, following protocol.

  Their circle tightened toward the center of the room, her team carving a wedge between the freed hostages and their captors. Fast and brutal, they neutralized the room with deadly intent. More gunfire. More men died. Hostages scrambled to get away. Her team sorted through the chaos and took control. In minutes it would be over.

  She heard a man pleading for his life in Russian. For a second she hoped it was Petrovin, but she knew better. Stanislav Petrovin would not go down easy. And the man would never beg for his life.

  “Clear center.” The last all clear sign came.

  It was over.

  They’d taken care of the last room, the stronghold where these men had made their final stand with the hostages. The smell of blood played second fiddle to another stench. A man had cleared his bowels as he died. She recognized the odor.

  Even through the ringing in her ears, she heard the low moans of the wounded and dying. Walking through the smoke and carnage, her team flexicuffed everyone in the room, even the hostages, the wounded, and the dead got their hands tied until things were sorted out and everyone was questioned.

  By the time Garrett found her, she saw the relief in his eyes that she’d made it through the operation. He rushed to her, careful not to reveal too much to his men. But the look in his eyes said it all.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  God, she loved the sound of his voice.

  “Yeah. Did we lose anyone?” She ventured a touch of his sleeve.

  “No, thank God. A couple of injuries, but they’ll live. It was a good op, Alexa.”

  She fought a smile, unsure what part God would have chosen to play, but she gave Garrett the benefit of the doubt that he had a direct line to a higher power. When he looked beyond her, searching through the murky haze of the room, Garrett smiled uncharacteristically, a strange sight in a room colored by bloodshed.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.

  “What?” She turned and shifted her gaze to where he looked. “What’s so funny?”

  “I had intel of Petrovin being here, but that’s Anton Bukolov himself. The guy behind Globe Harvest.”

  Garrett pointed to the old Russian who had pleaded for his life. When she’d seen the old man on his knees, she wondered if he was a victim. Now her sympathies for the old guy drifted away with the smoke. Bukolov would pay for what he’d done to all the innocent lives they’d never know about.

  “Before you leave, thanks for sticking with this,” Garrett told her.” We never could have pulled this off without you. The Sentinels are pleased.”

  She didn’t exactly count it as a blessing to be on the radar of the Sentinels—a far-reaching global organization that had confederates in every country, allowing Garrett’s alliance to operate in secrecy—but something he’d said stuck in her mind.

  “What were you talking about…I’m leaving for somewhere?”

  “Your bounty hunter is about to put her foot in it. She sent up a flare. Tanya tracked her to St. Lawrence Island. When she couldn’t get ahold of you, she made sure I got the message. If you hurry, you can keep her breathing for another day.”

  Jessica knew not to contact her unless it was an emergency. And knowing the bounty hunter, she’d be in the thick of a firefight before she’d admit she needed help. After all, she had first met Jessica in the midst of a thermite explosion.

  What are you up to now, Beckett?

  Once she heard about St. Lawrence Island, it only took a moment for her to connect the dots to the coordinate they’d dismissed in the Bering Sea. Somehow Jessica must have figured out the erroneous location was a hair off. Damn it! The island could have been part of their assault plan had they thought more out of the box and not played it safe.

  With her current location outside Providenija, Russia, Alexa did a quick calculation in her head on how long it would take to fly to St. Lawrence Island, but Garrett interrupted her.

  “Take your team and the AW139. I customized it so it’s got speed and enhanced range, a bird tailored for our kind of ops. Tanya will feed you the exact coordinates when you get airborne. I’ll clean up here, but stay in touch. If you need backup, call me.”

  Garrett didn’t look surprised by Tanya’s message to her, or surprised that she’d been tracking Beckett. As she rushed from the room, grabbing her team and making quick arrangements for the next order of business, she yelled back to him.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” She narrowed her eyes. “You could have picked any of the coordinates to assign me, but you picked here. You knew I was tracking Jessica. With us being so close to St. Lawrence, we might have a chance to help her.”

  “If you persist in believing I’m all powerful and have a magic crystal ball, then go ahead.” He shrugged.

  “I don’t know anything about your crystal ball, but if I had to guess, I’d say you had a pair…of brass ones.”

  Despite the grim setting, some of the men chuckled. But Garrett only shook his head and said, “Your bounty hunter—she’s an interesting woman.”

  Alexa raised an eyebrow and said, “Yes, she is.”

  Jealousy was an ugly affliction. Even now she’d been struck by it when Garrett gave his personal insight on Beckett. But as she raced for the helicopter, with her team following, she prayed she’d be in time to help the headstrong bounty hunter.

  Jealousy be damned.

  Northeast Cape

  St. Lawrence Island

  His men awaited his order. Petrovin shifted his gaze from face to face, thinking over his position on the breach in his security perimeter. Although he didn’t know the extent of the problem and would have handled the situation differently, he knew what Bukolov would want.

  And Stas didn’t want a repeat of Chicago. He’d blown apart the evidence, but not before a handful of cops turned into a multitude that he’d narrowly escaped. And similar to that situation, there might only be a few intruders outside now, but more might come. No, he wouldn’t toy with them today.

  He simply wasn’t in the mood.

  “Immediate evacuation. And this time, no hostages,” he told his man. “I will handle the detonation myself. We leave in twenty minutes and I wait for no one.”

  Every man in the control room stared at him.

  “You know what to do,” he prompted. “Make sure they are all locked in their cells, except for the girl in the operating room. She will get my personal at
tention.”

  He was done talking. For the sake of drama, he hit the silent alarm, a button on the console in front of him. Immediately, beacons of red rotated through the room and his men rushed to their duties, an all too familiar sight for him these days. Before he left the security room, he would set up for the detonation of the facility, an act he would control.

  But first he placed a call to the operating room. One matter remained unsettled.

  “We have no time for precision, Doctor,” he said. “Harvest what you can from the girl now, and leave the rest. I will be there shortly.”

  Calmly, he walked out of the security station toward the operating room. In controlled chaos, his men scrambled down the halls, securing prisoners and making their way to freedom—an escape tunnel where the helicopters would be fueled and ready.

  He would soon join them for their final farewell of this hellhole, but not before he had the girl’s heart and other sundry parts in a box. This would be one delivery he’d make personally.

  CHAPTER 30

  Northeast Cape

  St. Lawrence Island

  Tanya Spencer had provided Alexa the coordinates where she believed Jessica Beckett had last signaled. The woman hadn’t tracked her cell phone this time, but used the beacon signal off the necklace Alexa had given her for emergency use only. A more reliable means.

  While they were en route, Tanya had also given Alexa a quick yet thorough summary of what to expect once she got to the island. But once she arrived, Alexa had a hard time believing her eyes. What would Jessica be doing on this remote island? And why would the bounty hunter send up a high-tech distress signal here?

  Searchlights from the helicopter strafed the ground around the old Air Force radar site, giving her perspective on the scene. Bright white swept the ground and the rubble below, washing everything out. The place was a pit, looking more like a war-torn village. From what she could tell, this part of the island didn’t have much of a population. Yet according to Tanya, this was the place.

  Eventually, Alexa saw something to clue her in that she’d arrived at the correct coordinates. Several red flares burned on the ground near a collapsed cyclone fence. And a man in a trooper uniform came out of a dilapidated building and was waving his arms to flag them down.

  Speaking into her headset, she gave an order to her pilot, “Set down near that gate.” And to the man next to her, she said, “We’re going in to lend assistance to the local law and get a quick assessment of the situation, but once we hit the ground, I want you to head out again and do a perimeter search.”

  “Anything in particular you’re looking for, Marlowe?”

  “Yeah, a stash of helicopters on the ground or a locale to hide them.” She briefly explained what had happened in Chicago and how the Russian got away. “I want a tracking device on any aircraft you find. I don’t want any of these bastards getting away from me a second time.”

  “You got it.”

  Before they landed and talked to the trooper, she made another judgment call. She wasn’t in the mood for flack.

  “Now that we’re back in the good old USA, break out your FBI credentials. And I’ll do all the talking. I’m not in the mood for a delay from the locals.”

  Alexa switched colors with the ease of a chameleon, and without flinching, so did her men.

  As he walked down the corridor, Petrovin steeled himself for what he would see when he entered the operating room. Although organ harvesting was a means to an end for his superior Bukolov, he himself did not care for the whole distasteful mess. And despite the fact that he resented the privileged life of this blond American girl—his own life had not been so agreeable—she still stood out in his mind as someone with backbone. And he had to admit to having an inkling of respect for her.

  But duty meant everything to him. Without it, he had nothing.

  When he shoved open the operating room door, he looked for the carcass of the girl and expected to be repulsed by it. He hoped that seeing her dead might end the peculiar admiration he had for her. The defiant girl would fade from his recollections, replaced by images of the dead one. And corpses had always been easily dismissed from his mind, more a matter of convenience.

  But instead of seeing the girl, he found the room in complete disarray and one of his men unconscious on the floor with blood pooling near his head. The girl was nowhere to be found. When he looked up, the doctor rushed to him, his face red with agitation.

  “When the alarms went off, one of your guards left to save his own skin. And this one allowed the girl to get away.” The doctor pointed to the guard on the floor and went on, “She punched him in the gut with her elbow, and when he bent over, she shoved him into the wall. I think he may be dead.”

  The man was speaking faster now, out of breath. Spittal came from his mouth.

  “She looked like she’d taken martial arts. I couldn’t do a thing against her. Where do you think she learned that?”

  “Focus, Doctor. Where did she go?”

  The man pointed to his right. “She took off toward the elevator. She’s got the guard’s gun, and I think she took his keys too.”

  Stas clenched his jaw, working hard to contain his anger. He had to think clearly. But no matter how hard he planned for every contingency, whenever he involved others to carry out his orders, things got fucked up. And today had been no different. In the end there was only one person he could trust. And he had to remember that.

  “Why bother with her?” the doctor said, trying to downplay the incident and justify his own cowardice. “We should be going. Besides, she’ll die in the explosion anyway.”

  “You make a good point, Doctor. Very sound reasoning from an educated man, such as yourself.” He waggled a finger at him. “The men are waiting at the helicopters. Perhaps you should go. I will follow shortly. Since I’m a man of duty, it falls to me.”

  He turned to go, but stopped short at the door.

  “You know, Doctor. In many ways, we are men cut from the same cloth.” He could tell the good doctor believed he’d been insulted, but the medical man forced a grin. When he did, Petrovin added, “That’s how I know.”

  “Know what?”

  “That you have no heart.” He smiled and ventured a laugh until the man relaxed. “Because if you did, I would cut it from your chest and take it with me.”

  The doctor looked up, but before his eyes registered full recognition, Petrovin raised his weapon and pumped a round into the man’s heart and throat. He caught him just right, freezing the moment when the man’s expression switched from pompous to startled. Stas didn’t wait for the body to fall.

  He turned and walked away, muttering, “A bullet is a sure cure for stupidity.”

  He left the operating room, but once he got to the corridor, considered his options. He stood outside the room, awash in the red lights of the alarm system, and gazed down the hallway where the doctor told him the blond girl had run. Down the other way, his men waited at the helicopters. It didn’t take long for him to make up his mind.

  Above all else, he trusted his instincts and made his choice accordingly. A man of duty always weighed the consequences.

  “What was that? Did you hear that? Sounded like gunfire.” Gun in hand, Payton ran into the dark with his flashlight sweeping through the dusty haze. The crunch of dirt under his boots echoed down the gutted corridor. The air felt thick and muggy, making it hard for Jess to breathe.

  “I think it came from over here,” he cried out to her, not caring who else overheard.

  She raced after him, gripping her weapon and casting her flashlight in front of them both. She heard the shot and knew exactly what it was. But as she looked ahead, the corridor came to an abrupt end. Stone and rubble blocked the way. It didn’t look like there was a way around it. And her heart sank.

  She could have sworn the sound came from this direction. Hell, it wasn’t like they had a minivan full of options.

  But as she slowed, Payton picked up his pace, may
be seeing something she hadn’t. When he got to the end of the corridor, he reached to the floor and grabbed a handful of dirt. He tossed the dirt into the air, letting his flashlight pick up the particles as they drifted. To her surprise, the finer particles of dust drifted forward and got sucked through a section of the collapsed wall. Payton had found an opening large enough for them to squeeze through.

  As sure as she was that the gunshot came from behind the rubble, she was game to try whatever he came up with—his Hail Mary pass at fourth and long.

  “How did you see that? I would have missed it. Damn, you’re good.” She grinned.

  “I used to watch MacGyver reruns in the off season.”

  Before she could reply, Payton grabbed her hand and tried to rush her through the small opening, but she stopped him.

  “We better mark this spot for anyone to follow.”

  “The troopers?” he said. “Good idea.”

  “Yeah, right—Frank and Gary.” She would take any help she could get, but she was hoping Alexa might still find them.

  Payton fumbled through his pockets, fishing out fifty-dollar bills and a clean white handkerchief. The hankie caught her eye and she considered using it, but she had something more noticeable in mind.

  “At the risk of sounding prudish, turn your back.” When he did, she fished her arms under her shirt and pulled a Houdini. “Okay, we can use this.”

  With only a smile, she held up her lucky red bra and raised an eyebrow. This time she hoped for a different kind of good fortune.

  “That would get my attention.” He winked.

  Jess wedged the lacy garment into the debris near the opening and followed Payton through the wreckage. When they got to the other side, it didn’t take long to find an elevator. Locating a working elevator in this dump had seemed like winning the lotto until they got inside and looked at the button panel. Now they had way too many options to choose and no time to do it.

  Before Payton started to do the “man thing,” and hit all the buttons in a typical testosterone-driven shotgun approach, she reached out her arm and stopped him.